Ocean Pacific Tries to Keep Both Growth and Popularity

Even though Ocean Pacific still sells more surfwear than anyone else, to hear the company tell it, too many retailers have been selling the company short.

So now the company, among other things, is planning to open its own retail outlets in the United States.

OP reigned for years as the West’s leading clothier of the casual beach set. But today, the company’s sales in California and surrounding states rank third, lagging behind sales of OPshirts, sweats and T-shirts in such Southeast and Northeast states as Florida, Georgia, Alabama, New York and Pennsylvania.

“It’s just not cool (for surfers) to wear OP,� said Ernie Hernandez, manager of Newport Beach’s Surfside Sports. “Around here, we call it “O- what ,� added a Florida retailer, Kirk Cottrell of Island Water Sports.

The company’s executives admit that they have sailed through some rough seas and that they continue to wrestle with the problem of keeping growth without losing popularity or market share.

Testing Tactics

To change the minds of retailers like Hernandez and Cottrell, OP is testing a number of tactics

Last summer, the company took the unheard-of step of inviting influential retailers and other insiders to a two-day seminar at the Four Seasons Hotel to discuss how it could reverse its current California image as a not-with-it name.

And in hopes of retaining its mainstream market while it works toward wooing the surf shops back, OP plans to open three retail shops by May 1 to carry its line exclusively. The three will cater to young men and women, 15 to 20 years of age.

The three stores will be in high visibility sites--a shopping mall in Thousand Oaks, a well-trafficked Westwood plaza and a mall in the definitely non-West Coast city of Dallas.

The three new stores will be owned by Ocean Fashions Ltd. of Westwood. “Our intention is to get 10 to 12 stores open that represent the OP line and the beach life style� up and running by early 1989, said Rich Dunn, principal of Ocean Fashions Ltd.

If those shops succeed, Ocean Pacific stores could spring up across the country--as they already have in Mexico.

To date, however, the concept of an exclusively OP shop has been tried domestically only as a boutique within a department store--in Hawaii.

Strut Its Stuff

The mainland shops will give OP a chance to strut its complete line of stuff to potential consumers.

“It allows us to prove to the world that the product will retail in more diversity than it is allowed to do� under current marketing programs, said Jerry Crosby, OP’s executive vice president for marketing and advertising.

Crosby said that “conventional retailers like to cherry-pick� the OP line and “edit out valuable goods that we think should be presented to the consumer.�

Of course, another motive, Crosby admits, is to improve OP’s market share. The company and Dunn are keeping mum about how much of a return they expect.

And they are adamant that the idea is not to compete with those stores that currently sell OP--but only to better circulate the company’s products.